Ashley Laramie
Due Feb 15, 2011
Violence in Sports
Violence in sports has always been an interest to me because some sports the nature of the sport is violence. Over the summer, at my internship, there was an incident where a player had thrown a pitch at a batter, but didn’t hit him. The reason for this was because a previous game had led to some “smack” talk, which in turn led to this violent action. This incident will occur a lot in my future if I am a public relations coordinator or just working for a professional team in general. Hockey and football have the most violent game, but it the nature of the game compared to a violent act like baseball pitchers throwing it intentionally at another player. Several times a season, players are fined or kicked out of games because of their violent acts. This is why I chose this topic; there are plenty of examples to use and why it can be negative towards children.
The article I chose is about coaches and how they act influence their players and also players from other teams. Indirect and direct transgressions were looked at to see which affected players more. For each indirect and direct transgressions, there were five ways that abuse/violence could occur. Those five transgressions are physical abuse, psychological abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and modeling behavior.
In Quebec, Canada, in sporting context, ninety six percent of children said that their coaches are more influential than their parents. One of the main reasons violence is in sports is because of the statement before, so the study was done to see if coaches have an impact on children or youth and causing them to be violent in their sport. This study was done by having officials fill out conduct cards for the game in which they officiate. There could have been as low as one for a game or as many as six depending on the sport. They would rate the conduct of the players and coaches of both teams and also the spectators on a scale of one through five and then there is an additional comment box where they can leave other comments that they do not rate these participants on. The study that was conducted only took the cards that had critical incident reports or poor reports of the coach’s behaviors. Data was collected from various sports such as, ice hockey, football, soccer, baseball, basketball, and gymnastics organizations.
Soccer and ice hockey were the two sports that were looked at closely because ice hockey is a high contact sport and soccer is not so much a contact sport other than slight pushing to get a ball. Hockey is one of the sports that in America get all sorts of negative media attention; therefore hockey was to be used for the final data set. Soccer on the other hand was chosen because it is the largest organized sport for children and youth. With these two sports being the most attractive to the youth, the question remains, is it the sport that causes violence or the coaches?
This study was a mixed study with qualitative and quantitative research methods. Some parts of the study are done with numbers, but other parts are done with words. This type of research started out with using words as in having the officials write down comments about the participants and spectators of the games they officiate. Numbers are used in the instance of when the officials are rating the way the participants act on a five point scale. These numbers are then put into an SPSS program that can then show the results of which abuse is more common. With the SPSS program, there can be a number of ways to figure out where the violence is coming from and if the coach’s violent acts directly relate to the players violent acts. Are coach’s actions really an indicator of how their players will act?
It was found that children tend to mock adults in their behaviors whether it is positive or negative. The results show that indirect psychological abuse was the most common among coaches. Indirect psychological abuse is when a coach or player speaks down to another participant whether it is an athlete, coach, or official in a violent way. This shows that coaches or players use verbal sayings or slander to “intimidate” or psychologically hurt others and get them not to play to their potential. One of the officials spoke about how he/she had a coach swearing at him/her after the game about a call that happened during the game. The remarks were let go during the game, but when argued about during the game the official had given the coach a one game suspension. After receiving that, the coach didn’t stop resulting in a suspension up to four games. It however does not say whether or not coaches actions directly relate to the way the athletes act towards other. However, it is noticed that when a coach is acting aggressively/violently towards another team, the athletes pick up on this and act the same way. It was also said in the findings that because this was done only in Canada, the exact results were not found leaving this study biased. I feel as though there aren’t enough participants in this study to prove that athletes act as their coaches do. The way this study was done doesn’t show that athletes get the aggression/violence from their coaches; it shows the ways that the coaches use violence towards their athletes. I feel as though this study is biased because it was only done on the comment cards of officials, not of parents, athletes, coaches, and sometimes management that constantly observe the teams. Instead of just using the comment card, people that view that teams where there is an aggressive player or a violent act during a game should be the one to talk about the violence and then there should be a spectator that is not recognizable in the stands to watch and see who is aggressive and whether or not the coach is aggressive as well. There are many different ways that I would have done this study unlike the way they had done this survey because it isn’t clear whether or not coach’s violent behavior affects their athlete’s behaviors.
Bibliography
Crosset, T. T. (1999). Male athletes' violence against women: a critical assessment of the athletic affiliation, violence against women debate.Quest (00336297), 51(3), 244-257. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Deacon, J. J. (2004). No end in sight: the violence will continue until the NHL really makes offenders pay, writes James Deacon.Maclean's, 117(12), 18-22. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Guilbert, S. (2008). Violence and accidents in competition sports.Sport in Society, 11(1), 17-31. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Mutz, M., & Baur, J. (2009). The role of sports for violence prevention: sport club participation and violent behaviour among adolescents.International Journal of Sport Policy, 1(3), 305-321. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Raakman, E., Dorsch, K., & Rhind, D. (2010). The Development of a Typology of Abusive Coaching Behaviours Within Youth Sport.International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 5(4), 503-515. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Schwery, R., & Cade, D. (2009). Sport as a Social Laboratory to Cure Anomie and Prevent Violence.European Sport Management Quarterly, 9(4), 469-482. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.